miles of water.
They fired the heap of débris on top of Mount McCobb.
Jack tended the headland fire. Henry carried wood all night to the flames on the mountain.
Occasionally he lay down beside them and tried to sleep, but his ears were always attuned to catch the magical sound of a motor.
They ate very little.
On the second day the fires were still going, although they had relented the pace of feeding them.
On the third, exhausted, they all slept. Not all at once--but by turns.
"Probably," Stone said, and his first assumption was very close to the truth, "they only fly out to sea once in a great while. Probably they're sending a boat. In a day or two-
-"
Keep the fires going. Make them into smudges by day. Huge columns of smoke--
like the Lord leading the Children of Israel--stiff-standing above the summit of McCobb and swinging in the little wind over the water.
On the fourth day they were worn by the strain. They sat silent most of the time--
attending to the fires regularly, climbing the mountain until all were footweary--hurrying to the beach with axes.
On the fifth day they remained beside the shore, straining their eyes.
The sixth was like it. The sun came out and it was warm.
Beds in the house went unmade. Weeds gained in the gardens. No one shaved.
A week after the electrical day found them still in good spirits. There were plenty of possibilities.
"Any day, now. Maybe they can't travel in airships or in boats as fast as we'd thought."
"Any day. Of course. I believe that those fellows didn't know within a long way of where they were. Too cloudy to navigate and probably hard in a thing like that anyway.
They've doubtless sent a ship and it may take a long time for that ship to locate us. Maybe even a month."
Henry swallowed his impatience:'"
"A month?"
"Why not? It's a big ocean and the island's a small speck. Keep the fires going."
"Maybe--"
Someone frowned at Henry. Maybe the ocean was too big and the island too small.
Maybe the airship had never reached--land.
Stone sat on the porch, his cane between his knees. Henry lay on his back at his father's feet. Both men seemed weary. There were circles under their eyes and their skins wee haggard and drawn over their cheek bones.
Down on the headland a fire--a small fire in comparison to those which once had raged there--sent a single desultory plume of smoke into the vacant air.
It was a month, that day, since the visitor from the skies had fled overhead.
"It couldn't happen to us twice," Henry said in a strangled voice.
His father did not answer.
McCobb appeared at the door and murmured that it looked like rain.
As if in answer, a string snapped on Jack's banjo, which had been lying mute in the living-room for thirty days.
Stone never rebounded from the catastrophe. He lost all interest in the schemes which the others invented to explain the silence.
Once, when Henry suggested that the men in the air vessel had possibly believed the islanders were there as free men and had merely reported the existence of the island, and that someone sooner or later would come to verify the report, Stone had said:
"Bosh."
It was his last spark. A negative spark. An admission of surrender.
He had borne for a great many years a full knowledge of the awfulness of his misdeed. He had paid a hundred times over for its rashness.
Stone had been a mighty man. New York had called him brilliant and aggressive.
Paris had called him Spartan. In London he was evaluated as shrewd and acquisitive.
He had planned to perfection one of the most audacious human experiments ever made--to perfection if it may be overlooked that he neglected to supply a way for the return of his adventurers.
In the early years of the colonization of Stone Island it had been his brain and his spirit which furnished the driving force. He had led three men from despair to actual joy.
He had founded and energized a new world.
But now his strength was
They fired the heap of débris on top of Mount McCobb.
Jack tended the headland fire. Henry carried wood all night to the flames on the mountain.
Occasionally he lay down beside them and tried to sleep, but his ears were always attuned to catch the magical sound of a motor.
They ate very little.
On the second day the fires were still going, although they had relented the pace of feeding them.
On the third, exhausted, they all slept. Not all at once--but by turns.
"Probably," Stone said, and his first assumption was very close to the truth, "they only fly out to sea once in a great while. Probably they're sending a boat. In a day or two-
-"
Keep the fires going. Make them into smudges by day. Huge columns of smoke--
like the Lord leading the Children of Israel--stiff-standing above the summit of McCobb and swinging in the little wind over the water.
On the fourth day they were worn by the strain. They sat silent most of the time--
attending to the fires regularly, climbing the mountain until all were footweary--hurrying to the beach with axes.
On the fifth day they remained beside the shore, straining their eyes.
The sixth was like it. The sun came out and it was warm.
Beds in the house went unmade. Weeds gained in the gardens. No one shaved.
A week after the electrical day found them still in good spirits. There were plenty of possibilities.
"Any day, now. Maybe they can't travel in airships or in boats as fast as we'd thought."
"Any day. Of course. I believe that those fellows didn't know within a long way of where they were. Too cloudy to navigate and probably hard in a thing like that anyway.
They've doubtless sent a ship and it may take a long time for that ship to locate us. Maybe even a month."
Henry swallowed his impatience:'"
"A month?"
"Why not? It's a big ocean and the island's a small speck. Keep the fires going."
"Maybe--"
Someone frowned at Henry. Maybe the ocean was too big and the island too small.
Maybe the airship had never reached--land.
Stone sat on the porch, his cane between his knees. Henry lay on his back at his father's feet. Both men seemed weary. There were circles under their eyes and their skins wee haggard and drawn over their cheek bones.
Down on the headland a fire--a small fire in comparison to those which once had raged there--sent a single desultory plume of smoke into the vacant air.
It was a month, that day, since the visitor from the skies had fled overhead.
"It couldn't happen to us twice," Henry said in a strangled voice.
His father did not answer.
McCobb appeared at the door and murmured that it looked like rain.
As if in answer, a string snapped on Jack's banjo, which had been lying mute in the living-room for thirty days.
Stone never rebounded from the catastrophe. He lost all interest in the schemes which the others invented to explain the silence.
Once, when Henry suggested that the men in the air vessel had possibly believed the islanders were there as free men and had merely reported the existence of the island, and that someone sooner or later would come to verify the report, Stone had said:
"Bosh."
It was his last spark. A negative spark. An admission of surrender.
He had borne for a great many years a full knowledge of the awfulness of his misdeed. He had paid a hundred times over for its rashness.
Stone had been a mighty man. New York had called him brilliant and aggressive.
Paris had called him Spartan. In London he was evaluated as shrewd and acquisitive.
He had planned to perfection one of the most audacious human experiments ever made--to perfection if it may be overlooked that he neglected to supply a way for the return of his adventurers.
In the early years of the colonization of Stone Island it had been his brain and his spirit which furnished the driving force. He had led three men from despair to actual joy.
He had founded and energized a new world.
But now his strength was
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